This low-budget comedy will most likely try the patience of a paying audience with its uneven pacing, wavering tone and poor production quality.

There is absolutely no reason to catch a ride with the nasty, brutish and shrill "Stuber," a horror movie about our current American nightmare of late capitalist economics and unchecked law enforcement masquerading as an "action comedy."

If "American Beauty" were a bland comedy, it would be Joe Somebody.

The actors are more or less saving this franchise's bacon. Insurgent is a tick or two livelier than the first one.

Here and there an image of spectral beauty, assisted by the 3-D technology, floats into view and captures our imagination. But the script, which really should've been called "Sanctimonium," has a serious case of the bends.

Following on the abject failure of Bonfire of the Vanities, director De Palma seems to have seriously lost his way. [14 Aug 1992, p.C]

Coscarelli has captured the texture of a disjointed, half-remembered nightmare, full of figures and events that seem to have some symbolic value, but which have lost their precise meaning in the process of floating up from the subconscious.

The actors take your mind off things when they can: I like the way Hathaway jabs her elbow at the elevator buttons for punctuation, and the ardent commitment to language Ejiofor brings to his character’s public poetry readings. But a movie shouldn’t rely on Hathaway and Ejiofor to shell-game your attention away from the movie itself.

Davis, in particular, manages to create a fully dimensional character in the midst of a highly polemical screenplay.

You know what’s not bad? Transformers: Rise of the Beasts. Dumber than a box of lugnuts, but superior to the Michael Bay-directed schlocktaculars that ran as long as 165 minutes. The new “Transformers” movie clocks in at 117 minutes, a lot of them pretty zippy.

Slick, expensive and filled with good-looking actors flexing muscles, but once it grabs our attention it doesn't really reward it...this movie doesn't have fear -- or sheer wonder and marvel -- enough.

Writer-director Peter Sehr displays obvious directing talent, especially in his use of nonlinear love scenes. He shows the coupling, the approach and release all at once, out of order, mixing the entire seduction ritual into one fluid montage.

After an intriguing start, Transcendence — aka "The Computer Wore Johnny Depp's Tennis Shoes" — offers roughly the same level of excitement as listening to hold music during a call to tech support.

Levy surely knew that the script at hand didn't warrant a full two-hour running time; even if you enjoy The Internship, as my son did, it feels 20 minutes over-full at least. Cut out half of the "Flashdance" and "X-Men" references, and you're halfway there.

This high-concept romp demands an over-the-top and facile narrative, and some of the bits are a bit hackneyed, but Mafia Mamma is much more wacky, funny and violent than the too-tame trailers would have you believe. Collette goes for broke in her performance and Hardwicke juggles the tone, style and genre play with ease.

Stone Cold has a basic proficiency, despite some notably awkward edits. Director Craig Baxley paces the story well, and Walter Doniger's script follows the classic formula for the genre: the more evil the villains, the greater hero the star and the more justified the film's gore. [20 May 1991, p.4C]

Total Eclipse is a biographical film steeped in ecstasy and despair, seething with madness and torment.

This is a franchise with lead weights tied around its ankles.

The movie wouldn’t feel human at all, really, if not for the convincing emotion bond established between Mackie and Carl Lumbly as Isaiah.

From my vantage point, it doesn't include a single laugh.

The story, however, was interesting and the minor characters, as well as the photography, were enjoyable to watch. Not to mention you get a preview of what may be next in home entertainment. [13 Mar 1992, p.N]

Renegades steams along very nicely, with more than enough momentum to compensate for the callowness of its stars. [05 Jun 1989, p.3C]

Director John Wells dices the action, even the simplest conversation, into five harried shots when one would suffice. The many food-prep montages are cut and paced to the same numbing rhythm.

Has a remote feel. It sometimes impresses but never soars.

There's nothing here that's outrageous, startling or daring enough to give your funny bone a jolt.

Lead actors seeming like they're taking it easy is one thing. But a filmmaker trying to construct a smart romantic comedy actually must do some work.

Another of many recent Hollywood plotless wonders.

Rarely has a comedy been so empty of laughs. If this film makes any money, it all should go to the person who thought up the title. [18 Sept 1987, p.A]

The music is drippy and constant, the wobble from comedy to drama feels off, and the dialects have been reamed in the Irish press. Charm resists calculation; even if actors get some going, even if a writer creates an approximation in or between the lines, deliberately manufactured charm curdles so easily. The one success story of Wild Mountain Thyme belongs to Blunt, who has yet to give a poor or lazily considered performance.

The arrival of Ra (Jaye Davidson), bearing sci-fi cliches, changes Stargate from a merely hokey movie to one that is truly ridiculous.

Veteran director Arthur Hiller keeps the vehicle galloping along with a sure hand, careful not to let any of it sink to a fatal level of believability and always on the prowl for whatever wit can be harvested from any gizmo at hand. [17 Aug 1990, p.B]

Rife with wrong people in major jobs, which leads to a movie that lacks the requisite verve to make to it sparkle.

Has heart, but lacks bite.

Just sit, feel a little blue and watch Parker Posey wander through New York in an ugly conservative suit. In "Blade," at least she'll get a snazzier wardrobe.

Trying to be more antic and cuttingly funny, it misses the premise's shivery tension. The story loses us at precisely the moment it should put us in the vise.

The sequel is about nothing more profound than an awkward teenager's desire for a really cute boyfriend. [12 March 1999, Friday, p.N]

It isn't hard to take, but Harry and the Hendersons seems a bit familiar.

Pure spectacle has since been subsumed into narrative filmmaking, but the cinema of attractions is always present, especially in modern action movies, and there may be no greater current example of this than xXx: The Return of Xander Cage.

It looks like a TV ad, or 200 of them strung together, with the same kind of gaudy virtuosity, lavish technique and expensive self-mockery tinging every shot.

Still, it's the bits and pieces of this movie, the eccentric asides, that rescue it-when they work. [1 Oct 1993, p.L]

A manipulative look at dying with dignity and a lame yarn about as realistic as the fantasy in “The Princess Bride.”

Fred Claus seems a clever installment, not a seasonal classic, a buffet whose many nibbles you sample, move on and quickly forget.

Opus has its moments. But even the surprises aren’t especially surprising.

Stoopid fun, From Paris With Love doesn't do much for Paris or love, or your brain cells, but it flies like a crazed eagle on uppers and comes from the talented, propulsive schlocketeer Pierre Morel.

Splashes its drama all over the screen, subjecting its audience and characters to action that feels not only manufactured, but also so false you can see the filmmakers' puppet strings.

Has one other thing in common with "The Matrix Reloaded" -- too much story, too many angles.

A work of ineffable soullessness and persistent moral idiocy.

It's the premise of Crazy People that what the American public really responds to in advertising is absolute honesty. If that were true, then the ads for the film would proudly point out that "Crazy People" is cloying, derivative and never more than mildly funny. [11 Apr 1990, p.2C]

Compared to many movies of this kind, this Beaver is an enjoyable but mixed bag. [22 Aug 1997, p.C]

Jungle 2 Jungle, is a shallow, joyless show, whose family bonding comedy is as touching as its dead-bird jokes, as witty as a bowl of cat urine and as penetrating as its analysis of the Russian Mafia. [07 Mar 1997, p.F]

In The Haunting, the moviemakers succeed in something very difficult: creating a haunted house with real personality and terror. [23 July 1999, p.A]

A monstrously crude, blatantly tasteless film reminiscent of the now bygone drive-in movies. It's also sterling evidence of why they haven't been missed.

The film is perfectly mediocre, which is heartbreaking, not heartwarming.

Freeman gives his overwrought, over-familiar scenes an unlikely shot of intelligence and dignity that cuts through the formulas and almost makes them work.

Nothing elegant about Adams here, but she's terrific -- a sparkling screen presence. Her Earhart hoists this big-budget sequel above the routine.

It sounds fun. It's a little fun. For a while. But Bekmanbetov shoots every killing spree like an addled gamer, working that slow-down-speed-up kill-shot cliche like a maniac.

Assuming your psycho-pigtailed-killer memories extend back as far as "The Bad Seed," Maxwell Anderson's play filmed by director Mervyn LeRoy in 1956, Orphan may remind you of the icon made famous by Patty McCormack.

RoboCop 2 is every bit as sadistic as its 1987 predecessor but considerably less effective.

Hinges on humiliation and vengeance, which makes it like most other modern horror titles. Its focus on sexual assault, however, puts it in a different, more primal league.

Fire in the Sky would seem more a candidate for a TV movie than a theatrical film. [14 Mar 1993, p.4C]

Like all horror films, High Tension builds to a final, sobering flash of chaos that settles all scores. Some viewers will hate Aja's movie for its end-game reveal; others will love it for the very same reason.

A tedious picture about a remorseless serial killer, played by Matt Dillon.

Take Me Home Tonight, believe me, you've already seen.

What charmed me most about the movie was the interaction of the dogs themselves. [02 Jun 1995, p.J]

Just one more example of Hollywood cramming any old idea it can unearth into a moneymaking formula. [17 Feb 1995]

Recycling the regressive humor of his (Sandler’s) previous films, it piles on so much sentimentality that you wonder how anyone could consider him a renegade. [25 June 1999, Friday, p.A]

A movie can be unreasonably formulaic and still be reasonably diverting, and A Bad Moms Christmas is the proof.

Green has made so many interesting movies, from “George Washington” to “Snow Angels” to the best bits in “Pineapple Express” and more recent genre exercises. Halloween Kills settles for the reductive, distressingly anonymous hackwork of its title.

It's a better-than-average animated feature.

Much as I enjoy the actors I didn't buy a word or frame of Arthur Newman.

It's not much more than a collection of clever sight gags and one-liners that leaves the door wide open for another, better film about political correctness on the quad. [29 Apr 1994, p.D2]

It's better than some James Bond movies--no matter what your age.

With The Loss of Sexual Innocence, director Mike Figgis reaches an almost comical low in the pursuit of what appears to be a desperate need to express deeper, uh, depth. Figgis' deliberate obfuscation may delight him, but it leaves the viewer mystified and bitter. [18 Jun 1999]

Jake Speed isn't a movie. It's just a financial deal.

Ultimately Suburbicon is woefully underwritten. Gardner and Maggie are mere sketches, a set of facial tics and accessories masquerading as real characters.

The Nome King looks like a moveable Mt. St. Helens and he alone is magical. In fact, he blows Dorothy and her tacky-looking friends off the screen. So we end up liking the Nome King and hating Dorothy and her crowd, which I doubt was the intention of the L. Frank Baum series. [21 Jun 1985, p.1]

Optimism is nowhere to be found in Ritchie's movie itself. It is a grim and stupid thing, from one of the world's most successful mediocre filmmakers, and if Shakespeare's King Lear were blogging today, he'd supply the blurb quote: "Nothing will come of nothing."

There's a movie here, and there's a gimmick. The gimmick undermines the movie and the gimmick is attached to the wrong part of the movie. Other than that, Clue offers a few big laughs early on followed by a lot of characters running around on a treadmill to nowhere. [13 Dec 1985, p.38]

Van Damme himself, a graduate of the blank-stare school of acting, is so without emotional inflection on the screen that his most affecting moment in this film, if one is to judge from a preview audience's reaction, is when he drops a bathrobe for a couple of seconds of magnificent gluteal exposure.

The film positions Black women at the center of their own stories, and this authentic portrayal of the platonic relationships that hold them together feels rich and true, a celebration of a feminine community that becomes family.

Until it jumps the tracks into self-righteousness, though, Knowing, directed by Alex Proyas, can also be as unnerving as the best episodes of "The Twilight Zone."

Hutcherson spits his lines out as quickly as possible, which you appreciate, because the way the likable Johnson wrestles with his lines ("It looks like the liquefaction has tripled overnight!") you think, well, it's a living.

It's the neediest movie of 2011, and one of the phoniest.

Maybe if Mindel had focused more on his characters, less on the silly "noir" trickery, his film would do Garity justice. As it is, go find better work, kid.

The film is full of carefully balanced moral proclamations, to the point where it begins to resemble an episode of "Nightline." [15 Jan 1988, p.B]

Reasonably entertaining.

Diane Keaton--now there’s a trouper for you. She will not be caught giving less than 110 percent, even in a drab little heist comedy.

Almost comes as a breath of fresh air. Too bad it's so foul.

This is camp, pure and simple, and unless the translators have taken far greater liberties than is apparent, the filmmakers know it.

It's comfortable and Disneyfied and, with shots of the splendid Australian wilderness filling the long valleys between dramatic peaks, probably the safest way to travel.

Barker, who wasn't involved with the earlier Candyman, has never yet matched his stunning 1987 writer-director debut Hellraiser-and he never will if he keeps coming up with projects like this. [17 Mar 1995, p.J]

With a weak script, utterly unsympathetic characters and a nonsensical plot, it can barely keep plodding along.

The directive behind this sequel, clearly, was non-stop action. Let's think about that phrase a second. Do we really want our action movies to deliver action that does not stop? Ever? I get a little tired of action sequences that won't stop.

With all the songs, gowns and corny jokes, kids under 10 will likely love it, and frankly, that’s who this is for, not the millennials or Gen Z kids who grew up with Brandy or Hillary Duff.

The plot thickens and thickens and thickens until it chokes on a tangled mess of double-crosses.

Whimsical, well-crafted comedy-mystery in which detective Chevy Chase returns to Earth in the body of that charming little mutt, Benji. A surprisingly adult film in several ways -- there's some middle level profanity and as much wit and pathos as there is cuteness. [11 July 1980, p.8]

Serves up horrendous lead acting, murky cinematography, bland atmosphere, unengaging romance, mug-crazy cameo performances, bash-on-the-head satire and ill-timed slapstick gags that look like outtakes from a Bozo the Clown show gone berserk. [20 Oct 1995]

Without the brute vigilante junk, this 82-minute picture would be approximately 2 minutes long.